DISCLAIMER: I do not own any part of The Modern Faerie Tales, and I likely never will. I just read, appreciate, and dream just like the rest of us. All Hail Holly Black.


Hell Is...

It really wasn't until she returned to her life after being given the sword that evening by her personal faerie prince – or as close to one as she was getting or wanted to get – that she began to feel it.

It wasn't like the slow, throbbing burn that had gradually overtaken her mouth and made her wish for ice and water to try and rid herself of the searing hurt that had been his way of bringing her back and forcing her to honour her promise so long ago when they had first met.

It wasn't the bewildered, half-angry, part-confused pain of her mother's betrayal, an odd sensation of latent rage and tears just beneath her skin, burning at her eyes, pounding inside her head whenever she tried to make sense of it.

It wasn't like the pain she'd known as Greyan had slammed shining sickles into her mortal flesh and she had crumpled like a wet paper bag and woken up to things she barely knew in her delirium, just wanting it to stop burning.

It wasn't the bruised annoyance of lacrosse injuries or the sting of skinned knees and split lips.

It wasn't the vein-writhing dry-mouthed heart-pounding skin-searing pain of withdrawal, her whole body betraying what her mind knew she should want, making her prep the needle and make the amber sand of Never one with it so that she could evade the pain until the next time she woke up.

It wasn't the distant, foreign discomfort of her mother's glances, hesitant questions, timid inquiries into a life that she was no longer truly part of anymore.

It was apathy. It was life moving along so slowly and so horribly monotonously that she felt like screaming to make things go faster. It was the way her feet seemed so much slower then her mind, like images seen in a fevered dream, frightening but harmless. It was heated skin, inability to breathe, anger at those around her for existing when they were so inconsequential. It was choking whenever she caught a glimpse of dark hair or gold, saw someone tall in the distance, on the street. It was the smell of cold and damp and lavender that stung at her eyes and made them well up while her chest constricted until she felt she wanted to curl up in a corner and just sleep. It was the awful sensation that when she woke, she was too alone, and that when she trained she was missing something vital. Most of all it was the feeling that there was a gaping, rotting hole in her breast where her heart ought to be, and that thought made the feeling so much worse as she curled her fingers into hands that knew what a heart felt like.

It was dying. She was certain that it was dying. She couldn't imagine anything like it and since she'd tried more variations of pain than she cared to recall, she could only assume that this was dying an achingly slow, completely unfair death. It was only comparable to addiction in the sense that small things – a crow wheeling overhead, the sight of her team-mates' scandalised glances at her naked back, the livid scars that criscrossed her pale skin scratching against her clothing like a reminder that she hadn't dreamt it all – made the pain go away for a moment, just as another hit made the pain of coming down lessen. And that was what she needed. A hit.


She didn't really notice her mother's dressing-gown clad form hovering in her doorway as she threw things into her duffel bag, her carefully-wrapped sword strapped to her back over her black wool coat. She was fixed on gettting this over with so that she could leave as soon as possible, and her mother was just another obstacle on her wy as she closed her bag and tried to push past her to leave.

"Val, where are you going?" the waver in her mother's voice irritated her, and she gave her a hard look.

"None of your business," she replied, keeping her tone level, hoping that this could be dealt with without hysterics. She had a train to catch.

"Are – are you going to see Ruth?" her mother asked, hopeful and afraid, her daughter's steely eyes and concave cheeks and shorn hair still as alien to her as they had been the night she had returned and she almost hadn't known her child at all, something she was still ashamed to admit to herself.

"Maybe. I'll be gone a while." The unhelpful answer caused Val's mother a moment of panic and she clutched her daughter's arm.

"You can't go away again, honey – you said you wouldn't – "

"Let go of me," Val spat, wrenching her arm out of the older woman's weak, grasping hands, the once perfectly-manicured nails ragged and chipping.

"Val, baby please – " her mother called after her as Val pushed past her and left, the door slamming behind her.


The train ride wasn't quite the race of time her last had been, nothing ocurring other than what she thought was a glimpse of Lolli but turned out to be someone in a blue-feathered hat, and her thoughts strayed to Dave and Luis, hidden away in an Upper East Side dump, Luis breaking curses and enchantments put onto unsuspecting humans by creatures much like the one she was on her way to see.

Noone asked about her sword this time, perhaps assuming it was something else since it was swaddled in so much cloth it was difficult to tell much other than the long shape of it at a glance. The hard backbone it provided as she sat there, absorbed in her count down of the minutes until she would be within reaching distance of her goal, comforted her. She wondered if the iron she was bringing into the city made a difference to the fey who had made it their home in their utmost end of need, but it had been brought to her by just such a faerie, and so she couldn't see that it should matter. After a thousand needles, the one-thousandth mattered little.

She trudged through platforms she remembered waking up in, past shops and storefronts she had robbed from or demolished or simply altered, her veins filled to overflowing with stolen power, and she felt detached from it all as though it had been some foolish daydream, easily dismissed and unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Her bag cut into her shoulder but it didn't make a difference to the overwhelming sense of stupidity welling up in her as she made ready to enter the place she'd been brought to after her attack on an ogre, the place where she had sparred with a monster who was, after all, nothing like as monstrous as humans – the place she had thought would be his tomb. Steadying herself, she took the last few steps of her journey towards salvation –

and was grabbed around the waist by what looked a lot like an elf, with long, wine-coloured hair and a surprised expression on his face as he started to form the words,

"A human..?" He didn't quite finish what he was saying though, for she slammed her head into his face and he reeled back, clutching at his mouth, red running between his fingers, eyes flashing at her in astonished anger. She smiled at him, took a one-step run-up and slammed her booted foot upwards between his legs, elbow catching him on the jaw as he went down with a harsh cry, trying to catch her leg as she jumped over him and ran to what she hoped would not be the scene from her nightmares.


The salt-haired King of the Unseelie Court rose from his seat opposite the unglamoured troll, hand on the hilt of his sword as Val pushed the curtain aside and entered the room, her eyes wide as she took them in.

"Val..?" Ravus looked completely disoriented by her sudden appearance, and then, as she was drowning in his golden gaze, feeling completely helpless to understand he situation, the faerie she'd left gasping outside entering as well, reaching for her arm and spitting rather than saying,

"I apologise, my Lord, I could not hold her, she – " Roiben just held up his hand, turning to Ravus, who composed himself quickly and said,

"Mabry's killer, my Lord," by way of introducing her. The King looked at his knight, then at Val, who was also looking at his knight, albeit murderously.

"Leave her, Ellebere. She may stay," he said quietly, adding,

"I do not doubt that she overcame you. There is little dishonour in being bested by a human such as her." The look on Ellebere's bloodied face seemed to suggest otherwise, but he bowed his head and left, presumably to resume guarding the entrance to Ravus' home.

"Ka – my consort – " Roiben began, hastily amending his speech where he had been wanting to say someone's name, Val was certain, continuing,

"- was impressed by your valour, faerie-killer. As were we all. You have your own place in this council." Val narrowed her eyes at him, remembering the blood on Luis' face where his piercings had been torn from his flesh, the way this king had sat there on his throne, pretty as you please, as she attempted to prove Mabry's guilt through trial of combat just like in a medieval play and win back Ravus' heart from the gore-happy bitch. Ravus, who was looking at her as though he wished she wasn't there. As though he would give anything for her to be somewhere else, somewhere far, far away from him at that moment.

To mask the pang she felt at that realisation, she hardened her features and crossed her arms.

"What kind of council are we talking here?" she asked roughly, certain that otherwise her voice would betray her, crack with the onslaught of tears as she avoided the golden eyes she had come here specifically to stare into for indefinite periods of time.

"War," the King said simply.

"I am here to ask Ravus ' aid in defeating Silarial so that the solitary fey may exist without the fear of the Courts, the Courts may exist without fear of one another, and all of us may rest easy in the knowledge that there is one less evil in this world." His voice and eyes were just as hard as hers, and she thought she saw a loss in them that she couldn't quite define.

"You want him to help you kill another psycho faery bitch?" she asked bluntly, and he laughed suddenly, the change in his face making him lovelier than he already was. It died into what appeared to be the slightest breath of sadness flitting across the inhumanly beautiful features, silver eyes for a split second so empty that she felt sorry for him.

"I had almost forgotten..." he murmured, before shaking off the melancholy and his eyes became as hard as the steel they resembled.

"I do not merely wish her dead. I wish her erased from existance and my people liberated from her hatred and malice for the rest of our eternity. For that, I shall need the aid of the solitary fey. That is why I am here." Val nodded curtly.

"Your guys must be in some serious shit to come looking for help here," she said coldly, and he smiled.

"Just as you say. Ravus has promised me his allegiance in the upcoming battle." Val let her gaze fall on the troll she had been ignoring so far, her breath coming out in an agonised little puff that sounded a lot like 'no'.

"You can't – you can't be serious?" she asked, voice rising more than she had intended, and he looked at her steadily.

"I can, and I am. Lord Roiben shall have my aid in this fight. It has been decided." His deep, even voice cut where it should have washed over her as gently as the scent of mulled wine and hot water after a hard day's training.

"Were you going to tell me about this?" she asked quietly, shaking although thankfully, her voice did not. He closed his eyes as though exhausted.

"Yes."

The Unseelie King was watching Val with a grave look that almost made her think that he knew what she was feeling. She didn't care. The finer feelings of some faerie king were nothing to her in the face of this.

"Did you know this was coming?" she asked, voice slightly less steady, and he looked at her sadly.

"Yes." She smiled shallowly, nodded, looked at Roiben again, saying,

"If you don't mind, I would like to have a minute here, if you're done." He nodded, inclining his head in her direction, looking back at Ravus – who bowed in much the same manner as Ellebere – and then murmuring an almost apologetic,

"I wish that it were not so, for all our sakes," and leaving with a sweeping of his long black coat the added to the chill that was creeping into Val's limbs. Ravus didn't speak as she looked around her at the room where he had nearly died, where he had held her, lying on the floor that night as he told her that his heart was hers as surely as if she had it as a keepsake in the box inside which she had brought it back.

The heart some Bright Court monster was going to run through in this upcoming battle for the Bitch Queen's title.

"Val... Can you not even bear to look at me?" he asked, sounding tormented beyond words, and she raised tear-filled eyes to meet his.

"I thought it was over..." she said brokenly, and before she knew it she was enveloped in the strong, real arms of the fantasy she had relied upon to bring her through her solitude in the time apart, drowning in the scent of him, clinging to his coat with all the fervour of a lover who has long missed her beloved, but for the wrong reason.

This was not a beginning, after all...